The Source.5
Mountains.68
With some apologies, I’m going to throw a large post with a ton of photos at you. These are all the remaining photos that I took during my trip on the very expensive but quite remarkable Gornergrat Bahn, which connects from Zermatt in the valley below, to Gornergrat where (one of?) the highest hotels in the alps sits on a rocky ridge with views to the Gorner Glacier and more. Truly, I edited the photos down but felt each of the many I’m still sharing with you explores a different aspect of this particular journey and afternoon. Or maybe I just want to show lots of photos to make myself feel I got a lot out of the trip, given that the ticket was more expensive than what I’d pay to go from A’dam to Brussels…
From the Air.66
Winter Wonderlands?
Every so often I scan through my own blog and remember beautiful things I’ve seen. Last year for the first time, I did my own personal “greatest hits” selection of photos from the ten+ years I’d been blogging at that point. This year, I find myself thinking about ice, even though I’m a few hundred miles at least, I suspect, from the nearest naturally-occuring ice. Perhaps because of that: listening to seasonal tunes about winter wonderlands and white holidays has reminded me of the ice and snow I’ve seen.
I also realize I didn’t photograph things I wish I had, such as snow piling up on the streets of Beijing in the winter of 2005…although I do feature skaters on Beijing’s Qianhai, and cracking ice on a pond outside Beijing during a winter hike, taken the same winter. Above & in the collage below are photos from winter in Yosemite & summer in New Zealand (icy grass on the Keppler Track in Fiordland; and also a shot of the glacier on South Island’s west coast). There are also frosted grass & icicles from a winter trip to the Great Falls in Paterson, New Jersey: yes, such beauty can be found right off Interstate 80, if you know how and where to look :-). Plus some frosted grass in the early-morning shade at Hood Mountain in Sonoma County, two winters ago. If you’re already experiencing ice and snow, maybe these won’t do much for you…let me know, either way. May your year be warm, safe and dry in 2017.
Two Glaciers, Many Streams & Towering White-Tipped Peaks…
…must mean we’re on the wild southwestern coast of NZ! In this entry you’ll see photos from both Franz Josef & Fox Glaciers, as well as shots from the temperate rain forest to which these glaciers descend at their lowest, warmest level where they’re melting all too rapidly these days, what with holes in the ozone layer and global warming more generally. There are also views from the Haast Highway along the south coast, and up and over the Haast Pass alongside Mt Aspiring National Park into the town of Wanaka. They all have names that identify them. To put this in some perspective, think of the last entry (or scroll down to it) and understand that we did a fairly substantial last-morning hike along the nearly-tropical-seeming Abel Tasman Coast track, grabbed a water-taxi back to Motueka, hopped in the car and stopped for some berries and dinner along the drive south, then spent the night a short walk downriver from the ice cave at Franz Josef Glacier just below. It’s really quite unreal and surreal at the glaciers because, despite significant melt and receding up their canyons to higher ground, they still descend to the level where rich dense temperate rain forest grows and unusual-sounding birds call, and it just feels utterly other-worldly. Certainly this close to sea level, this far downhill from their main bodies, neither of these will stand out if side-by-side with other, bigger glaciers you might have seen…but the clear way they’ve affected the landscape and the simple fact that a short walk away one is enveloped in dense temperate rainforest is pretty amazing.
(so much world, so little time....) 